Musings from a developer of different kinds of formats. Note - this blog is many a time a kind of notebook for me to remember things I've come into touch with or reflections and ideas that I've had during development projects. If you can find use for the writings here, I'm well happy. By Simon Staffans.

Monday, January 16, 2012

The Transmedia Beat

As some of you might have noticed, I published
”One Year in Transmedia” a couple of weeks ago, a curation of this blog
combined with a number of interviews with some really intelligent and creative
people in the field of transmedia. In one of the answers – ”What instrument do
you see yourself playing in the transmedia orchestra?” – Andrea Phillips wrote
something that got me thinking. She answered:

[…]I'd say percussion. I'm the inexorable
drumbeat that keeps each section on time and coordinated as the symphony plays
out. With no beat, the rest of it kind of falls apart, doesn't it? And even in
places where there is no drumming, the section is still an invisible presence
as the rhythm keeping time in your head. That's me!

This feels very true to me. If you talk about transmedia, one
of the most interesting challenges is how to engage the audience in whatever
you are trying to offer them, and once engaged, how to keep them engaged. In
this, the “beat” that Andrea describes above feels absolutely crucial. Talking
about rhythm it all makes even more sense:

Rhythm - Rhythm is made up of sounds and silences. These sound and silences
are put together to form patterns of sounds which are repeated to create a
rhythm. A rhythm has a steady beat, but it may also have different kinds of
beats.

So you have the sounds of your transmedia
property – the videos, the web sites, the blogs, the social media output and so
on – developed and produced and distributed in order to catch the imagination
of your target audience and hook them to your story and your content. Then you
have the silences of your property. Some might call them ”sandboxes”, some
”cheese holes”; they’re the parts of your story and your content that simply
are not there yet.

If you’ve designed your property and story
well and hooked your audience, this is where they engage themselves to contribute,
create and communicate. It doesn’t matter if it’s an ARG or a treasure hunt
online, if it’s contributing to a book or a graphic novel or if it’s something
completely different. These silences are where you give your audience two
sticks and a drum, and ask them to keep the beat going. It’s a possibility to
be genuinely amazed by the skill and the devotion and the creativity of the
ones who engage themselves.

Personally I feel the studies of the art of composing and
creating for a number of instruments bear a lot of resemblance, at the very
least on a philosophical level, to the work of a transmedia producer, creator
and storyteller. Just look at one of the definitions of the specific term
”upbeat”:

An
unaccented beat or beats that occur before the first beat of the
following measure. In other words, this is an impulse in a measured rhythm that immediately
precedes, and hence anticipates, the downbeat. It can be the last beat in
a bar where
that bar precedes a new bar of music. 3. The upward stroke made by a conductor to indicate the beat that leads
into a new measure.

Anyone else feel this is a good definition of
one of the transmedia conductor’s important tasks? The task to get everyone’s
attention and point to what’s coming next, to make sure the orchestra plays in
sync and the audience stays onboard.

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About Me

I work mainly as a designer of cross and transmedia formats. I also do research into the stuff we develop, get published, do talks etc. Interested in social media as well, and especially the connections between all this stuff and the storytelling possibilities opening up. This is all quite interesting, entertaining and actually even fulfilling. Also, it helps pay the mortgage. Happily married, three great kids.